PVSWiki : Planning For Presentations

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How To Present Vote Smart

Presenting Vote Smart is an exciting way get our name and message out there. Presentations can forge partnerships, garner interest, solicit donations and recruit interns. However, it is important to prepare for presentations, as there is also the potential for making Vote Smart (and yourself) look bad. The goal of this Wiki page is to provide a basic guide to preparing for outside presentations, and to note things that have and haven't worked in the past.

First Steps in Preparing and Developing Your Presentation

Know Your Audience

• Presentations should be tailored for your audience. For instance, a college classroom presentation should be very different than a presentation to politicians. This will be fleshed out more below, but it is important to keep in mind from the start.

Logistics

• Make sure you know where you are going, when you should be there, how long you will be presenting for, and any other important information that may come up.
• Ask yourself these questions:
• Do I know the exact location of the presentation?
• Does everyone presenting with me have transportation to the event?
• How should I dress? Is this a formal or informal event? (Business Casual should be default)

Materials

• Plan out what materials you will have available at your presentation, and what you need to bring (Laptop, HDMI, Projector...ect.). Always have a plan B, and always bring your plan B with you so you actually have it available. (Yes, some people forget to do this.)

Time

• Know how long it's going to be. You don't want to plan a 30 minute presentation when you only have 5 minutes to speak.

Providing a Background on VS

First and foremost, you need to tell people briefly who we are- before you go any further your audience needs to know:

• We are nonpartisan
• That we provide research into candidate and public official's public records, for voters.
• This can be accomplished with a simple introductory sentence, such as: "Because a knowledgeable electorate is the strongest component of a healthy functioning democracy, Vote Smart strives to provide free, non-biased, in-depth, and accurate information about current officials, candidates, issues, elections, and legislation."

Convey our trustworthiness:

It is very important that you immediately build trust and credibility with your listeners. We are living in a very hostile political climate, and many people immediately steer clear of anything political. You need to immediately convey that we are the "Good Guys" in politics!

1. If you want to come on our founding board and you have a known political reputation, you have to join with a political enemy. Always name-drop the most famous in pairs: Carter & Ford, Goldwater & McGovern, Gingrich & Dukakis, etc. “were among our first co-founders.”
2. VS is funded entirely by philanthropic foundations and the contributions of thousands of individuals—we do not accept support from special interests. WE ALWAYS NEED HELP!
3. Most of our work is done by volunteers and interns, who are not paid, and the small staff who are paid receive minimal salaries. All staff, interns, and volunteers agree to "check their politics at the door" while working at Vote Smart.
4. We do not lobby for or against any cause or issue, or support or oppose any candidate.

After you talk about our background, you want to talk about why what we do is important.

1. This is a great time to talk about your experience with Vote Smart, and get more personal.
• Why did you take little or no pay to join Vote Smart?
• Why do you believe in what we do?
• What bothered you about politics and made you want to join Vote Smart?
2. You can also talk about our mission as an organization. Here's an example:
• Vote Smart is a “Voter’s Self-Defense System.” It allows citizens to defend themselves against the often-manipulative campaign tactics of many candidates by offering them an independent, trustworthy source of information. We are providing the information our Founding Fathers considered essential in the struggle to self-govern: factual, accurate, relevant information on the backgrounds and public records of our elected officials and candidates. We feel so strongly about this that we recently changed our motto from “Just the Facts” to “FACTS MATTER!”

At some point in your presentation, talk about how they can help.

They can:

1. Become a contributing member of Vote Smart
2. Become a ambassador of Vote Smart and promote us in their community.
3. Intern with Vote Smart
4. Volunteer with Vote Smart
5. Like us on social media/ join our e-newsletter email list and share our communications with others.

Presenting our Research

Know How to Use Our Website!!!:

• This is a fundamental skill you must have to give an effective presentation. Staff's knowledge of how to use our website outside of their own sub-department is often sub-standard. This includes knowing how to navigate to and what information is contained on pages such as for teachers, and government 101. There is nothing more embarrassing for the organization and yourself than representing yourself as a knowledgeable employee only to not be able to find a piece of information that we cover in front of a group of people.
• In addition you should know how to use I-Spy, and use it as the primary search function to point out our 6 major data groups. While staff often use and tell others to use the bottom search bar, when doing a presentation it will look bad or awkward to skip down the the bottom of the page to use the small search bar and/or tell people not to use what we obviously intended to be the main way of navigating our site. You should feel free to mention the smaller search bar at the bottom as an additional resource however.

What Does Your Audience Need to Know?:

• Specifically, know in how much detail you should go into on our data and research. For example, when presenting to a general audience there will be little interest in knowing exactly how we collect our data, the focus should be on giving a general overview of what data we have available. However if presenting to a more technical minded audience like professional researchers or even prospective interns, an overview of how we collect data might be reasonable to include.
• Regardless of what you end up presenting regarding our data, it is important to know the methods of how we collect our data in case there are any questions or audience members express interest in a more detailed explanation.

Have a Set Routine of Examples to Give for Each Data Type:

• Before giving a presentation it is highly recommended that you find the examples of each main datatype (Bios, Speeches, Votes, SIGs, PCT Issues, Funding) you will use to demonstrate our data. This is important for several reasons:
• Firstly, it will help improve the flow and pacing of your presentation if you know what to expect when you move from one datatype to the next
• Second, our website can be finicky at times, and knowing exactly where you will be going next when presenting can help avoid any embarrassing errors in our data or website display.
• Lastly, having a set list of data you know will be accurate and relevant will help ease any anxiety you may have about the presentation.

Quirks or Issues with Research Pages to be Aware of

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